The Book Of Knots – Traineater

So I’ve just decided that Anti- Records has become one of my favourite record labels, possibly the next one after Hydra Head. They have released albums by some of the almighty greats, you know. Any label would be lucky to have albums in their roster by the likes of Tom Waits, Elliott Smith, Neko Case, Johnny Cash, etc. This year, they’ve had such an impressive showing, releasing stellar albums by The Locust, Grinderman and now, possibly one of the best Anti– releases ever, Traineater by the Book of Knots.

“Okay, back up, hold it and get a grip on yourself, kid, possibly the best Anti- release ever? Are you smoking some sort of crack, boy?” I can hear you jeering. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought as well, but the more I listen to this album, the more I become enraptured by its being. Imagine this: 14 tracks of some of the most bi-polar drone-metal you’ve ever come across, with each song containing a different vocalist, ranging from Tom Waits, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, Norman Westburg and lets just say, a gaggle of others. All of this produced by Joel Hamilton.

Oh and apparently it’s “loosely inspired by growing up in a depressed steel town.”

Quite a lot to get one’s head around, but how does it sound?

Hands down, Traineater opens up with one of the greatest starting tracks I’ve ever heard, quite possibly ever. “View from the Watertower” just blasts out of the gate with Carla B’s very, shall we say unique, vocal styling. To get a clearer image of the song, think Conor Obrest growing a large pair, joining The Blood Brothers and shrieking over some machine-like droning that rollicks like a powder keg atop manic, almost stream-of-conscious lyrics. Are you still with me? Good. That’s just the first track.

The instrumentation of this album is just phenomenal. Each song is the equivalent of a mini epic and each one is completely different from each other, but when played together they all seem to flow cohesively. To be honest I don’t even know how to completely describe them to you without blowing an internal fuse from the sheer complexity of it all. Personal standouts are the songs “Pray” which feature the legendaryTom Waits on vocal duties, over a jumpy guitar/drum/trumpet beat, lamenting about power failures. The very sombre and depressing title track and the bitter spoken word rant of “Hewitt-Smithson”.

I’ve probably botched this review somewhere along the way, but I will say, this is going on my top 10 of the year no doubt. This album blew my mind in all of the right ways. I highly recommend it.